Writing Lesson Quotes

Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position. ~ Stephen King

You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm?
I will tell Him that His press agents could have done with a writing lesson or two, I said. To myself. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Writing is a cerebral journey where the writer molds experience into useful thought capsules and thoughtfully takes recitative inventory of their spiritual depot. The act of personal essay writing is a subtle search to track and discover how a contiguous chain of occurrences links the essayist's case history of rational and irrational behavior. Writing a person's life story fosters acceptance of their prior personal failures and serves to open a doorway to living modestly and harmoniously. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Don't underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor. ~ Anne Lamott

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy. ~ Dawn French

Writing or talking about famine and the world's response to it is not very easy. ~ William Shawcross

I think that as a writer your responsibility is to search for and stir up the things that are in this world. There is violence in all of us, and beauty, and strength, and weakness. What's my job? To only write about the good and the beauty, or is it to write about all of it? That's my greater responsibility, to write about them as I see them and as they are. ~ Markus Zusak

I am writing a book more improbable than 'The Interrogative Mood' that I call 'Manifesto'. It's two guys talking who speak artificially conveniently. ~ Padgett Powell

I wrote a book called 'Doll Bones', which was another middle-grade book, and when I was writing it, I needed a place in the U.S. that made bone china. And there are only two places in the U.S. that make bone china. They made it by grinding down actual cow bones. It was a plot point. It was a creepy doll book. ~ Holly Black

Because I live in south Florida I store cans of black beans and gallons
of water in my closet in preparation for hurricane season.
I throw a hurricane party in January. You're my only guest.
We play Marco Polo in bed. The sheets are wet like the roof caved in.
There's a million of me in you. You try to count me as I taste the sweat
on the back of your neck. I call you Sexy Sexy, and we do everything twice.
After, still sweating, we drink Crystal Light out of plastic water bottles.
We discuss the pros and cons of vasectomies. It's not invasive you say.
I wrap the bedsheet around my waist. Minor surgery you say.
You slur the word surgery, like it's a garnish on a dish you just prepared.
I eat your hair until you agree to no longer talk about vasectomies.
We agree to have children someday, and that they will be beautiful even if they're not.
As I watch your eyes grow heavy like soggy clothes, I tell you When I grow up
I'm going to be a famous writer. When I'm famous I'll sign autographs
on Etch-A-Sketches. I'll write poems about writing other poems,
so other poets will get me. You open your eyes long enough to tell me
that when you grow up, you're going to be a steamboat operator.
Your pores can never be too clean you say.
I say I like your pores just fine. I say Your pores are tops.
I kiss you with my whole mouth, and you fall asleep next to my molars.
In the ~ Gregory Sherl

I wish to try my hand at a novel," he said. "Just scribbling, I assure you, but it strikes me as such a noble art, requiring none of the monetary resources of opera or drama, nor the erudition of poetry. Perchance a publisher could be found. I'd be satisfied by the printing of even a score of copies, if only to hold the bound work in my hands. It gives a unique satisfaction, I assume, the writing of a novel. ~ Kyle Muntz

I'm always thinking about young people first when I'm writing music. Whenever I can reach that young person and inspire them to go after their own dreams, start their own movement just like I did with Wondaland. Starting their own tribe and showing people that we are not all the same, we're not all monolithic. I think that's what it's all about for me. ~ Janelle Monae

I did the drawing and writing - for five years. I made a lot of short films the whole while and I made a promise to myself in front of the mirror that I would stop drawing when I signed my first contract for a feature film. ~ Patrice Leconte

Languages for me have a secret venom that every so often foams up and for which there is no antidote. ~ Elena Ferrante

As children, we were given a choice between the talented but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare. We wanted to be swift as the wind and a bit more strategic - say, not taking quite so many snoozes before the finish line. After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win. The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through. ~ Carol S. Dweck

There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight. ~ Warren Buffett

I'd like to teach kids how to write songs. This will be my first year so I'm just as green as some of the rest of the folks. It's like a music camp and I get to hang out with some of the past contestants. ~ Bo Bice

Length is weight in fiction, pretty much. ~ Joan Silber

I write mostly as a director. That's why my screenplays are very detailed. So I get into the images I see. I like that. ~ Deepa Mehta

I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers. ~ Kathleen Hanna

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect. ~ George R R Martin

I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it. ~ Haruki Murakami

The first forms of writing emerged not for art, literature, or love, not for spiritual or liturgical purposes, but for business - all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts (sorry). ~ Daniel J. Levitin

There is his religion of art, my young successor: rejecting life! Not living is what he makes his beautiful fiction out of! And you will now be the person he is not living with! ~ Philip Roth

Usually when I finish the draft of a book, I'm sure I'll never write another one. I'm just that tired and sick of myself. But then another idea starts percolating. It usually begins with the narrator's name, then some idea that intrigues me about her life or situation. I try to ignore it as long as I can, because I know when I start writing, I'll be right back into it, every single day. But eventually, I just have to. It's a compulsion! ~ Sarah Dessen

Producing writing is not so much like filling a basin or pool once, but rather getting water to keep flowing through till finally it runs clear. ~ Peter Elbow

In a sense, the first (if not necessarily the prime) function of a novelist, of ANY artist, is to entertain. If the poem, painting, play or novel does not immediately engage one's surface interest then it has failed. Whatever else it may or may not be, art is also entertainment. Bad art fails to entertain. Good art does something in addition. ~ Brigid Brophy

Writing is difficult all the time; the thing is to learn something every day. ~ Richie Benaud

About Archimedes one remembers that he did strange things: he ran around naked shouting Heureka!, plunged crowns into water, drew geometric figures as he was about to be killed, and so on ... One ends up forgetting he was a scientist of whom we still have many writings. ~ Lucio Russo

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing. ~ Shirley Hazzard

I love writing songs with people, which is about really taking risks, throwing yourself over the falls and really seeing what you're made of and seeing how it sticks. Seeing how others react to it, and seeing also how it can become a melody and how it can really take off from your experience. It's a way of seeing life unfold on the page before me. ~ Jason Mraz

Together we'll make magic ...
Who had conjured whom?
She seemed to remember Oliver suggesting this once before, but she hadn't really appreciated the importance of his question. Was she the dream? Was Nao the one writing her into being? Agency is a tricky business, Muriel had said. Ruth had always felt substantial enough, but maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was as absent as her name indicated, a homeless and ghostly composite of words that the girl had assembled. She'd never had any cause to doubt her senses. Her empirical experience of herself, seemed trustworthy enough, but now in the dark, at four in the morning, she wasn't so sure. ~ Ruth Ozeki

The lesson is that you can still make mistakes and be forgiven. ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing! ~ Rod Serling

For me, writing stories is one way of feeling connected to the universe and God. ~ Elif Safak

You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer. ~ David Morrell

I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking 'What have I achieved?' rather than 'What have I enjoyed?' I've been writing about a subject I love as long as I can remember
horses and the people associated with them, anyplace, anywhere, anytime. I couldn't be happier knowing that young people are reading my books. But even more important to me is that I've enjoyed so much the writing of them. ~ Walter Farley

The fear of Mortality is the base of Immortality ~ Udayveer Singh

I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story. ~ Joan Didion

Sometimes, when we don't learn a lesson in life, it pops up repeatedly until we do. Might this person be giving you an opportunity to learn an unlearned lesson from the past? What lesson(s) might that be? ~ Liisa Kyle

The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever. ~ Hans Zimmer

To write a story, I think you really have to open yourself up to the world. ~ Ann Brashares

[My] interest as a writer is not in reflecting actual human speech, which, of course, does not occur in sentences and is totally undiagrammable ... My interest is in trying to reflect the reality of experience-how we feel when we talk to each other, how we feel when we're engaging with questions that interest us. ~ John Green

We are probably the most frustrating band to soundcheck because we always go off on jams and our sound-man is sitting there going: "oh god, I don't want to interrupt this, but ... we've got to get things moving along ... " We're just easily distracted because we want to be writing all the time! ~ Theresa Wayman

A good journal entry- like a good song, or sketch, or photograph- ought to break up the habitual and life away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world. ~ Anthony Doerr

I hope I am pigeonholed with comedy. I'm really not interested in writing the darker stuff, the emotional stuff. ~ Jane Espenson

Read critically, write consciously; speak clearly; tell your truth! ~ Clint Smith